James Rielly

Following his critically acclaimed travelling solo show in public spaces throughout Wales in early 2001, this exhibition of James Rielly’s most recent paintings is the artist’s first solo show at the Timothy Taylor Gallery.
 
In James Rielly’s new paintings emotional ambiguity, rather than sexual suggestion, is now central. It is a world in which the roles of adults and children are reversed, and immaturity or gravity is humorously misplaced. Adults parade their childishness while children look on with pensive eyes. A toddler stares out with a grave expression from the pink fluffy bunny costume in which it has been engulfed. They are mysterious images lightened by a mischievous humour that awaits interpretation.
 
James Rielly is perhaps best known for his wall ensemble of small paintings that hung in Sensation at the Royal Academy in 1997. This work acted as a random assortment of family photographs, coaxing the viewer into elaborating a connecting narrative. Rielly’s earlier images of anonymous not-so-innocent children and grown-ups are often sexually confrontational with an ambiguity that has occasionally sparked an outraged public response. However the suggestive power of these open-ended paintings implicate the viewers’ own assumptions and preoccupations rather than those of the artist.
 
James Rielly was born in 1957 and lives and works in London. His paintings have been the subject of solo exhibitions such as the recent 2000 travelling show Casual Influences, starting in the Oriel Mostyn Gallery, Wales; Sensible Ways at the Musee des Beaux-Arts de Nantes in 1997, as well as CAN, Centre d’Art Neuchatel, Switzerland, 1998. Rielly has also been in numerous important group shows such as Sensation, Saatchi Collection, Royal Academy, London in 1997, The Double, The Lowry Art Centre, in Salford 2000; Growing Up Post-Modern, Illinois State University Gallery, USA. 
 
Forthcoming exhibitions include a solo show in 2002 at the Fond Regional d’Art Contemporain Auvergne in Clermont-Ferrand, France (June 14th to August 31st, 2002) and a retrospective at the Centre of Art, Salamanca, Spain.